We continue our series of posts from Windows Embedded interns with the first of our 3 Explorer Interns that I had the privilege of coaching this summer. What’s an Explorer Intern? These interns don’t spend their whole summer in one of the three Software Development positions, but rather rotate between all of them, getting a taste for each. They’ll get the chance to come back next summer as a regular intern in the role of their choice. Below, Meg Quintero will tell you about her summer here in Seattle. To learn more about her project, check back next week for a post authored by all three Explorers.

Introduction

Intern Signature Event at Gas Works Park

Oh hai! My name is Meg, and I am one of the three Explorer interns on the Windows Embedded team. I am a rising junior at Harvard College concentrating in Computer Science and am contemplating a minor in Anthropology to further explore human interaction with technology. I am most recently from Havre, Montana, however, Cambridge has become more of my home. Back at Harvard, I am a soprano in the Harvard LowKeys, a contemporary co-ed a capella group, and have been singing for as long as I can remember. I enjoy biking, rollerblading, running, and pretty much anything that allows me to be outside. I am a big fan of the Red Sox and was able to attend a Red Sox vs. Mariners game and rep my team. I have been enjoying all that the Puget Sound area has to offer including incredible theater (“Rent”, “Les Miserables”, and “Turandot” were phenomenal), great shopping (Pike Place FTW), and waterfront a plenty. I also felt as if I died and went to heaven when I was handed a Samsung 9 Series Ultrabook at the Microsoft Intern Signature Event after hearing one of my favorite bands (Young The Giant) live at Gas Works Park.

A lot of our summer interns are wrapping up their experiences here at Microsoft, so you’ll be seeing several more of these posts in the next few weeks. In this post Arijit Choudhury, an SDE intern, tells you about his experience and work this summer.

Getting a chance to work as a Software Development Engineer (SDE) intern at Microsoft is my very own ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ story. I still remember using my first PC from the 90s (Windows 95 running on an Intel MMX processor) and how it introduced me to the Internet, PC games and computer science (CS). Today I am going to share my experiences about my Microsoft internship and in particular, my stint with the Windows Embedded Componentization team.

But first, whoami? I am Arijit Choudhury and I’m studying for my Master’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Before that, I finished my bachelors from the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology in Gandhinagar, India. Most of the time, you’ll find me programming (complete with noise cancellation headphones) or playing Soccer wearing an Arsenal jersey on the University field. Getting a chance to learn how to write good code for Microsoft and playing soccer along with other Microsofties in beautiful Seattle is my idea of a perfect summer.

Now that I’ve introduced myself, let us move straight to the three things that impacted me the most during my internship:

The Microsoft Culture

Being a “Dev” or SDE Intern

My 12 week intern project or… How do I find the right modules for deploying an app on a custom Windows Embedded Standard 8 image?

When thinking about the newest features or the things that may excite you about the next Windows Embedded release, servicing may not be the first thing that comes to mind. However, as many of you know, servicing and managing your devices comprises a huge part of their lifecycle and cost. We realize this as well in the Windows Embedded team and strive to make the servicing and update experience as simple as possible for Windows Embedded Standard 8. In many ways, this means making the experience as close as possible to the Windows 8 servicing experience.

Changes to Windows Update Experience

In Windows Embedded Standard 7, all updates to Windows were applicable to Windows Embedded, but only security updates appeared through Windows Update. Additionally, those security updates were packaged separately from the Windows security updates. As such, they would appear in the IT administrator’s consoles separately as “Security Update for Windows 7” and “Security Update for Windows Embedded Standard 7” even though they contained the same payload.

For Windows Embedded 8, all update types will be available through Windows Update (with the exception of service packs) and these will be packaged together with the updates release for Windows 8, meaning less clutter in the IT admin’s console. To learn more about the nine different update types, please see the appendix below.

Also, several changes have been made to Windows 8 that will also improve the Windows Update experience for Embedded customers. As described in this blog post on the Building Windows 8 blog, there will be less disruptive reboots due to Windows Updates, which is being achieved in a handful of ways:

Updates will only cause a reboot when security updates are downloaded during the 2nd week of each month, regardless of when these other updates that require a reboot were downloaded

Required update notifications will no longer appear as a popup or “toast”, but instead the notification will appear on the logon screen

Just four years ago I got the chance to spend a summer as a Microsoft intern, which was an absolutely fantastic experience. This summer we have quite a few interns getting a similar experience on Windows Embedded. Jordan Goldberg’s post is the first in a series of blogs from those interns to let you learn more about their experiences, their projects for Windows Embedded, and Microsoft’s culture. We hope you enjoy reading about their experiences!

Hello World! My name is Jordan, and I am an intern here on the Windows Embedded team. Today I would like to share the experience I have had here at Microsoft and how I’ve been given the opportunity to make an impact with my work. To start, let me introduce myself. I grew up in the “Great White North” -- Canada, or more specifically, the town of Caledon which is slightly Northwest of Toronto. I am currently completing my undergraduate degree in Computer Science at the University of Guelph and my interests range from playing guitar to practicing parkour to developing mobile and web solutions. This summer I have had the extreme pleasure of moving to the West Coast to complete an internship with Microsoft! For the past 8 weeks I have been working on developing a Windows Debugger Extension for the new Unified Write Filters feature in Embedded Standard 8; but I will delve more into this experience later.

Experience at Microsoft

Life here at Microsoft has been nothing short of remarkable. In the short time that I have been here Microsoft has announced the innovative Xbox Smart Glass platform, unveiled the highly anticipated Windows Phone 8 and revealed the ultra-secret Microsoft Surface; I can proudly say that I am working for one of the most exciting tech companies in the world! On top of this, the Redmond campus is absolutely breathtaking. Being surrounded by snowcapped mountains, green vegetation and sprawling forests makes the commute to work each day a treat. And with a population of over 40,000 Microsofties, the campus feels more like a city than a corporate headquarters!

As you may have noticed from our Community Technology Previews for Windows Embedded Standard 8, there have been some tweaks to how various technologies are represented and grouped in our toolkits, and they are not just cosmetic changes. Windows Embedded Standard 8 introduces the concept of modules, replacing the packages that were in Windows Embedded Standard 7 and providing more flexibility and enhanced functionality. In this post, Dave Massy gives an overview of modules and how they will change your development experience in Windows Embedded Standard 8. Dave is a Program Manager working on the componentization team of Windows Embedded. When not spending time with his young son and daughter, he enjoys driving his 1958 Jaguar XK 150 around the Puget Sound area. Additionally, Dave derives great pleasure from replacing any Z he finds with the letter S to properly conform to the Queen’s English.

Introduction

In Windows Embedded Standard 8 there are subtle changes from Windows Embedded Standard 7 in how we expose individual technologies as building blocks for creating your OS These building blocks allow you to create an OS image that matches your needs and not include functionality you do not need.

In Windows Embedded Standard 7 we referred to the building blocks of the OS as packages. In Windows Embedded Standard 8, they are modules. Packages and modules may seem similar because you use them to build up a functional image. However, under the hood there are technical differences that allow us to improve the overall experience of using the catalog and defining an image that meets your needs. For instance, one of the key advantages is that third-party modules can be in the catalog alongside OS modules. You can even create your own modules using the Module Designer tool that is included in the Windows Embedded Standard 8 toolkit.